**ASRock Fatality Gaming K6 Z270 Motherboard Review**

In this review, we'll take a closer look at the ASRock Fatality Gaming K6 Z270 motherboard, a high-end enthusiast board that's designed to deliver exceptional performance and features. We'll explore its key features, including its UEFI interface, hardware monitoring capabilities, and overclocking options.

**UEFI Interface**

One of the standout features of this motherboard is its user-friendly UEFI interface, which provides a comprehensive overview of the system's configuration and settings. With just a few clicks, users can access various sections, such as "Hardware Monitor", where they can view all hardware parameters, including temperature readings, fan speeds, and power consumption. Additionally, the UEFI interface allows users to configure their network settings, setting up a static IP address or using DHCP if needed. For those who want more control over their system's power delivery, the motherboard offers an "UFI Download Server" configuration option, which can be accessed from the Hardware Monitor section.

**Overclocking and Cooling**

In terms of overclocking, we were pleased to see that the ASRock Fatality Gaming K6 Z270 motherboard performed admirably. With a modest overclocking session, we managed to push our I5 CPU to around 4.5 GHz, which was impressive considering the relatively minor gains compared to its Skylake predecessor. The VRM (Voltage Regulator Module) stayed remarkably cool during this test, indicating that the motherboard's power delivery capabilities are indeed robust.

**KBL Lake Processor**

The KBL Lake processor is a key component of this motherboard, and while it may not offer dramatic performance upgrades over its Skylake counterpart, it does bring some significant improvements in terms of power management and efficiency. With the introduction of KBL Lake, Intel has implemented various features aimed at reducing power consumption and heat generation, such as improved thermal throttling and more efficient power delivery. While our tests didn't reveal any drastic differences, we can expect that this processor will be a solid choice for those seeking incremental performance gains.

**Security Features**

In terms of security, the ASRock Fatality Gaming K6 Z270 motherboard offers various features to ensure user data remains protected. The "Secure Boot" option allows users to enforce the operating system's boot process, ensuring that only authorized software can run on the system. Additionally, the motherboard includes Intel Platform Trust options for enhanced security.

**Boot Options and Debugging Tools**

For those who prefer a more customized approach to their system's boot options, this motherboard offers standard Fair Security Options, including Secure Boot and platform trust options. Users can also configure their boot manager settings, allowing them to select from multiple operating systems. Furthermore, the motherboard includes a numeric diagnostic readout feature, which provides users with detailed information about any issues they may encounter during the boot process.

**Linux Compatibility**

We were pleased to see that our testing with Linux revealed that this motherboard works seamlessly out of the box. With minimal configuration required, our system booted up and functioned perfectly, without any issues or errors. This bodes well for users who plan to use this motherboard with Linux or other operating systems.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the ASRock Fatality Gaming K6 Z270 motherboard is a solid choice for enthusiasts seeking high-performance capabilities and robust features. While our testing may not have revealed every possible tweak or optimization available on this board, we were impressed by its overall performance and reliability. If you're in the market for a reliable motherboard with a strong focus on power delivery and cooling, look no further than this ASRock Fatality Gaming K6 Z270 motherboard.

**Test Environment**

We tested the ASRock Fatality Gaming K6 Z270 motherboard with an Intel I5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a standard PC case. Our testing was conducted in a controlled environment to ensure accurate results. We also consulted various online forums and user communities for feedback and recommendations on this motherboard.

**Disclaimer**

As with any electronic device, it's essential to follow proper safety procedures when working with electrical components. The information provided in this review is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Always consult the manufacturer's documentation and guidelines before attempting to overclock or modify your system.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enCaptain log St eight kbl Lake release is upon us we're looking at the z270 chipset to go along with the new kbl desktop processors going to make a log entry regarding the azrock fatality z270 gaming k6 you could beam down some support Captain aiz out oh what's gotten into me I don't even know so we're going to take a look at the ASRock fatality z270 gaming k6 overall it is you know a four slot ddr4 board does support up to 3866 although that's a single slot I don't have any memory that fast to test it with but with the gskill memory that I have it worked great out of the box ddr4 3200 uh even with all four sticks work fine that's a 32 GB configuration with this this is Intel obtaine ready now the big difference with z270 is that the DMI has four extra PCI Express Lanes for peripherals Thunderbolt connections whatever um the back panel connections on this Implement an as media USB 3.1 with one type A and one type c let's take a closer look at the ports along the back at the top of the motherboard we can see that we've got our first m.2 slot now this is an e key which is designed for wireless adapters Bluetooth adapters combo adapters that sort of thing then you've got two cutouts on the back panel for your wireless solution this motherboard can be ordered with a built-in Wireless solution got PS2 mouse and keyboard two usb3 ports VGA and DVI and one HD DMI uh you've got two Intel NYX one i219 and one i211 you also got your as media USB 3.1 solution with one type a port and one type c Port as I was mentioning before two more USB 3.0 ports and then below that you've got your inbuilt audio solution which is based around that realtech ALC 1220 but it's a sound blaster Cinema 3 solution now what about our PCI Express layout well you've got three physical by6 slots and three physical by one slots this can be a by6 for your graphics card or a by8 by8 configuration or by 8X 8x4 so it does support three-way Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI it also comes with the high-speed Bridge you can do the quad SLI thing if you want to do that with two Nvidia graphics cards on kbl Lake you can also see that there are two more m.2 ports now the m.2 layout on this board is pretty intelligent the m.2 is going to have ample room to breathe regardless of where you put it unless you're in a dual Graphics configuration but if you're in a dual Graphics configuration you can always use the the m.2 above the first graphics card that that m.2 is going to have the best breathability but the second m.2 is just below the second PCI Express by 16 slot so if you're running two graphics cards or two cards that would produce a lot of heat the second m.2 may not get as much cooling but it's move to the very front of the board to give it the best shot at cooling so if you do have front Cooling in your case even though the m.2 may be covered by the graphics card you're going to get that fresh air intake from the front of the case at the bottom edge of the motherboard you got your HD audio solution now this is on an isolated part of the PCB for noise reduction noise cancellation so hopefully you don't pick up too much digital noise on the analog circuit for the the uh sound card then you've got your jumper which is for resetting the seos then you've got an onoff switch for your XMP profile so if you want to set your XMP profile by just turning the switch on this will tell the motherboard to automatically use the XMP overclock profile of your memory so if you you know like the DDR 3200 memory when you plug it in it runs at 2133 until you tell it you want to use the extreme memory profile and then it'll run at 3200 well you can just throw the switch the motherboard will try to use 3200 right out the gate then you've got your RGB header connector so this will use standard RGB header strips you get your two Thunderbolt connections so if you're going to use Thunderbolt with this motherboard you will need an addin card you put that in the bottom slot and it's also going to plug into these motherboard headers and then you've got your three USB 2.0 headers for internal peripherals or if you want to break it out into more USB 2.0 ports you got your TPM header you got your rs232 header you got a four pin fan header which you can control through the UEFI and then you've got your front panel connections just above that at the front of the motherboard you've got your m.2 slot this one supports uh M do2s up to 110 mm in length then you've got your eight SATA ports you got two USB 3.0 ports another fan header your 24 pin ATX power connector then you got your reset and power buttons at the top edge of the board just behind your four ddr4 Ram slots uh you got your two CPU fan headers one of which is for the CPU optional fan in case you're doing a pushpull configuration or a water pump then of course you've got your 8 pen power connector and then tuck behind the eight pin power connector is that m.2 that I was mentioning before now one thing to note with this motherboard with the three PCI Express by one slots the back of the slots are open so you can use PCI Express peripherals that are not necessarily by one you could use a buy two card such as a network interface card or a buy4 card such as a capture card however your PCI Express bandwidth will be limited to just the PCI Express by1 interface if you need PCI Express by4 or three or two you'll have to use the bottom slot for that now the bottom slot and of course the m.2 uh do support nvme booting and all of that these two m.2 slots are both SATA SATA 6 GB per second as well as PCI Express thanks to the z270 chipset and the PS2 Port is great if you're a crazy person like me still running an IBM model M with a PS2 interface yeah it's not in key rollover unless you got my mods but it's pretty good there's one other fan header that I didn't mention which is just above the first PCI Express by one expansion slide all right we are in the UEFI of our z270 gaming k6 now this is a very very early UEFI so things may change as it were this is the basic setup screen uh you can go to the tools section and update the UEFI from the internet you can do the internet flash thing and it'll initialize your internet connection maybe and then maybe you'll be able to download the flash hey we've got an update look at that so you just Arrow over to update and hit enter and it'll download and update the firware you just hit enter to reboot the system and you're good to go and we're back in UEFI after it's been updated all right so let's go into advaned mode F6 and take a look at our full settings so we got you can see that it's detected the memory 16 GB of RAM that's our crucial you can see that it detects our I5 7600k at 3.8 GHz 6 Megs of cache confirm that we've got the AVX ratio setting so that we can enter a negative value here um this is helpful for overclocks because if you recall from Skylake um sometimes we would disable the AVX instruction set altogether because when doing AVX testing with a high overclock the system would crash this will let you set a negative multiplier so that the AVX part of the CPU runs slower even with a higher overclock which is a nice feature I wonder why speed shift is disabled by default this does give us the per core overclock control so we can set you know One Core two core three cores and four cores for what the overclock ratio will be here we see that we can disable some of our process cores enable C States for power management enable or disable CPU thermal throttling technology virtualization other Hardware features this is the de Ram screen uh the Intel management firmware em firmware version 11.6.1 1126 good to know vtd is enabled this is going to be important if you use Hardware pass through hardware virtualization if you intend to use the onboard uh GPU as well as an addin GPU you'll want to enable this so that you can have maximum multim monitor support here you see we can control both of our onboard ethernet controllers on board front panel audio the WAN deep sleep power options and some other Advanced Options under SATA mode selection we can see that we can pick between ahci and Intel rst that's rapid storage technology with obtained system acceleration support we can also control the addin as media controller which gives us some extra s ports and we can see how our SATA devices are detected down here Thunderbolt is possible through an addin card through the addin header but it's fully disabled in this configuration so we got PS2 and rs232 support under the super. configuration and then acpi gives us options to uh have the system wake up if you know a PS2 peripheral wakes up or you know the Layin or you know RTC alarm or USB keyboard or PS2 keyboard or whatever xhci handoff can be useful if your operating system doesn't properly support usb3 or you're going through an installation where usb3 is not supported by the operating system installer you can turn this on and you may be able to get past um the operating system installer not being able to detect its installation USB drive or something like that you can turn that on here I also like that the UEFI gives you control for enabling and disabling USB ports you see this a lot on business class machines but you don't really see it very much on DIY machines where you can individually control each USB port some businesses like to do that to prevent people from you know using flash drives but still maintaining USB compatibility or USB functionality for USB peripherals you can also set if you want to go by default into this more advanced view or if you want to start out on the easy mode ufi screen that sort of thing it's pretty standard really this ufi does feature a system browser where you can browse the uh system and see what peripherals are installed we don't have very much installed right now so doesn't show very much but you can you know select an individual item and see more details about that for addin cards or nvme that you may have installed or USB peripherals or whatever is installed on the back panel it's really handy UEFI tech service lets you file an incident with ASRock technical support directly from the UEFI you can set your name and phone number and email and you know attach some information about your issue and it'll send your ufi configuration which greatly expedites the troubleshooting process the easy rate installer and E easy driver installer will help you configure a USB stick that contains like the Windows operating system with drivers necessary for Intel rst and that sort of thing and then of course you've got insta flash internet Flash and secure backup for the UEFI you can copy the UEFI from one chip to another chip because there's a backup chip on the motherboard and then you can go into your uh internet configuration and set it up for something other than DHCP if your network doesn't have a DHCP server or you just want to manually configure it you can also configure the uh ufi download server for the global region that you're in under the hardware monitor you can see all the hardware parameters you can also go into fantastic tuning I love that name and set the profiles that you want for your fans and and how they respond it's kind of nice that it's in the UEFI you don't have to rely on operating system support for that you can set the CPU opt header to behave as a CPU optional header fan or water pump control water pump control is just you know full on or full off chassis 3 Fan can also be a water pump if you would like for it to be you can set the mode here to be water pump mode and then you'll have the same sorts of controls as you do from the CPU optional header there's also over temperature protection here which is a sensor based on the motherboard uh for control of over temperature versus CPU thermal throttling so it's a little little different thing but this will shut down the system when the temperature is uh detected as overheated you got your standard Fair Security Options and including the secure Boot and Intel uh platform trust options if you're going to use secure boot go ahead and enable it before you install Windows or Linux as the case may be and then you got your standard issue boot options where you can configure you know the operating system that you want to boot from your boot manager that sort of thing that's been a quick tour of the ASRock fatality gaming k6 z270 based motherboard hopefully this uh tour of the ufi was insightful and you found everything you were looking for now in testing with this motherboard um you know I've only got the one I5 CPU to test this with so I have not had a chance to really put it through its Paces really see what it's got in terms of overclockability in terms of power delivery in terms of heat dissipation but for the modest overclocking that I did getting the I5 to about 4.5 GHz it did really well the vrm really didn't get very hot at all kbl Lake in general had like all the power management stuff and like all the efficiency of Skylake really pretty much gone the the the gains the performance gains with KB Lake really not that much most of the games with K Lake are around the peripheral IO so you can run more PCI Express Lanes for your peripherals things like more m.2 or more Thunderbolt that sort of thing the processor itself is really not not anything dramatic in terms of an upgrade over Skylake uh it actually uses a lot more power and generates a lot more heat than Skylake but for that extra power and heat you get a tiny tiny little bit more performance and maybe a little bit more overclockability all of the jury is still out on that but overall I did not have any problems with this board it does have a numeric diagnostic readout so you can look in the manual if something's not booting or can't find anything which will help you pin down you know if your computer won't post or you've got problems maybe you got Miss seated Ram or something like that you'll get a numeric code on the readout that'll help you troubleshoot overall it's a pretty competent board for z270 uh it's a little different it's a little different color scheme I think the board is maybe aimed at Gamers or aimed at people that want a red and black color scheme for their motherboard but overall I found it to be a pretty competent motherboard there were some subtle differences in the UEFI but if there's you know a huge swath of features or a huge you know set of tweaks that I missed let us know in the comments and I'll add it to the description now I didn't have a chance to try this motherboard with Linux but the extreme 4 z270 also from ASRock worked perfectly with Linux out of the box uh sound the whole nine yards so I would expect this one to work perfectly out of the box as well given that the hardware is so similar but if that's not the case or you know if somebody runs into problems let us know in the comments and I'll be glad to do some additional testing maybe once all the KB like hoopla is out of the way I can Circle back to this motherboard and we can try some PCI pass through something like that all depends on you guys whatever you want I don't know and whatever we got time for so overall it's pretty good if you picked up one of these let us know what your experiences are in the comments at level one text and wle I'm signing out and I'll see you thereCaptain log St eight kbl Lake release is upon us we're looking at the z270 chipset to go along with the new kbl desktop processors going to make a log entry regarding the azrock fatality z270 gaming k6 you could beam down some support Captain aiz out oh what's gotten into me I don't even know so we're going to take a look at the ASRock fatality z270 gaming k6 overall it is you know a four slot ddr4 board does support up to 3866 although that's a single slot I don't have any memory that fast to test it with but with the gskill memory that I have it worked great out of the box ddr4 3200 uh even with all four sticks work fine that's a 32 GB configuration with this this is Intel obtaine ready now the big difference with z270 is that the DMI has four extra PCI Express Lanes for peripherals Thunderbolt connections whatever um the back panel connections on this Implement an as media USB 3.1 with one type A and one type c let's take a closer look at the ports along the back at the top of the motherboard we can see that we've got our first m.2 slot now this is an e key which is designed for wireless adapters Bluetooth adapters combo adapters that sort of thing then you've got two cutouts on the back panel for your wireless solution this motherboard can be ordered with a built-in Wireless solution got PS2 mouse and keyboard two usb3 ports VGA and DVI and one HD DMI uh you've got two Intel NYX one i219 and one i211 you also got your as media USB 3.1 solution with one type a port and one type c Port as I was mentioning before two more USB 3.0 ports and then below that you've got your inbuilt audio solution which is based around that realtech ALC 1220 but it's a sound blaster Cinema 3 solution now what about our PCI Express layout well you've got three physical by6 slots and three physical by one slots this can be a by6 for your graphics card or a by8 by8 configuration or by 8X 8x4 so it does support three-way Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI it also comes with the high-speed Bridge you can do the quad SLI thing if you want to do that with two Nvidia graphics cards on kbl Lake you can also see that there are two more m.2 ports now the m.2 layout on this board is pretty intelligent the m.2 is going to have ample room to breathe regardless of where you put it unless you're in a dual Graphics configuration but if you're in a dual Graphics configuration you can always use the the m.2 above the first graphics card that that m.2 is going to have the best breathability but the second m.2 is just below the second PCI Express by 16 slot so if you're running two graphics cards or two cards that would produce a lot of heat the second m.2 may not get as much cooling but it's move to the very front of the board to give it the best shot at cooling so if you do have front Cooling in your case even though the m.2 may be covered by the graphics card you're going to get that fresh air intake from the front of the case at the bottom edge of the motherboard you got your HD audio solution now this is on an isolated part of the PCB for noise reduction noise cancellation so hopefully you don't pick up too much digital noise on the analog circuit for the the uh sound card then you've got your jumper which is for resetting the seos then you've got an onoff switch for your XMP profile so if you want to set your XMP profile by just turning the switch on this will tell the motherboard to automatically use the XMP overclock profile of your memory so if you you know like the DDR 3200 memory when you plug it in it runs at 2133 until you tell it you want to use the extreme memory profile and then it'll run at 3200 well you can just throw the switch the motherboard will try to use 3200 right out the gate then you've got your RGB header connector so this will use standard RGB header strips you get your two Thunderbolt connections so if you're going to use Thunderbolt with this motherboard you will need an addin card you put that in the bottom slot and it's also going to plug into these motherboard headers and then you've got your three USB 2.0 headers for internal peripherals or if you want to break it out into more USB 2.0 ports you got your TPM header you got your rs232 header you got a four pin fan header which you can control through the UEFI and then you've got your front panel connections just above that at the front of the motherboard you've got your m.2 slot this one supports uh M do2s up to 110 mm in length then you've got your eight SATA ports you got two USB 3.0 ports another fan header your 24 pin ATX power connector then you got your reset and power buttons at the top edge of the board just behind your four ddr4 Ram slots uh you got your two CPU fan headers one of which is for the CPU optional fan in case you're doing a pushpull configuration or a water pump then of course you've got your 8 pen power connector and then tuck behind the eight pin power connector is that m.2 that I was mentioning before now one thing to note with this motherboard with the three PCI Express by one slots the back of the slots are open so you can use PCI Express peripherals that are not necessarily by one you could use a buy two card such as a network interface card or a buy4 card such as a capture card however your PCI Express bandwidth will be limited to just the PCI Express by1 interface if you need PCI Express by4 or three or two you'll have to use the bottom slot for that now the bottom slot and of course the m.2 uh do support nvme booting and all of that these two m.2 slots are both SATA SATA 6 GB per second as well as PCI Express thanks to the z270 chipset and the PS2 Port is great if you're a crazy person like me still running an IBM model M with a PS2 interface yeah it's not in key rollover unless you got my mods but it's pretty good there's one other fan header that I didn't mention which is just above the first PCI Express by one expansion slide all right we are in the UEFI of our z270 gaming k6 now this is a very very early UEFI so things may change as it were this is the basic setup screen uh you can go to the tools section and update the UEFI from the internet you can do the internet flash thing and it'll initialize your internet connection maybe and then maybe you'll be able to download the flash hey we've got an update look at that so you just Arrow over to update and hit enter and it'll download and update the firware you just hit enter to reboot the system and you're good to go and we're back in UEFI after it's been updated all right so let's go into advaned mode F6 and take a look at our full settings so we got you can see that it's detected the memory 16 GB of RAM that's our crucial you can see that it detects our I5 7600k at 3.8 GHz 6 Megs of cache confirm that we've got the AVX ratio setting so that we can enter a negative value here um this is helpful for overclocks because if you recall from Skylake um sometimes we would disable the AVX instruction set altogether because when doing AVX testing with a high overclock the system would crash this will let you set a negative multiplier so that the AVX part of the CPU runs slower even with a higher overclock which is a nice feature I wonder why speed shift is disabled by default this does give us the per core overclock control so we can set you know One Core two core three cores and four cores for what the overclock ratio will be here we see that we can disable some of our process cores enable C States for power management enable or disable CPU thermal throttling technology virtualization other Hardware features this is the de Ram screen uh the Intel management firmware em firmware version 11.6.1 1126 good to know vtd is enabled this is going to be important if you use Hardware pass through hardware virtualization if you intend to use the onboard uh GPU as well as an addin GPU you'll want to enable this so that you can have maximum multim monitor support here you see we can control both of our onboard ethernet controllers on board front panel audio the WAN deep sleep power options and some other Advanced Options under SATA mode selection we can see that we can pick between ahci and Intel rst that's rapid storage technology with obtained system acceleration support we can also control the addin as media controller which gives us some extra s ports and we can see how our SATA devices are detected down here Thunderbolt is possible through an addin card through the addin header but it's fully disabled in this configuration so we got PS2 and rs232 support under the super. configuration and then acpi gives us options to uh have the system wake up if you know a PS2 peripheral wakes up or you know the Layin or you know RTC alarm or USB keyboard or PS2 keyboard or whatever xhci handoff can be useful if your operating system doesn't properly support usb3 or you're going through an installation where usb3 is not supported by the operating system installer you can turn this on and you may be able to get past um the operating system installer not being able to detect its installation USB drive or something like that you can turn that on here I also like that the UEFI gives you control for enabling and disabling USB ports you see this a lot on business class machines but you don't really see it very much on DIY machines where you can individually control each USB port some businesses like to do that to prevent people from you know using flash drives but still maintaining USB compatibility or USB functionality for USB peripherals you can also set if you want to go by default into this more advanced view or if you want to start out on the easy mode ufi screen that sort of thing it's pretty standard really this ufi does feature a system browser where you can browse the uh system and see what peripherals are installed we don't have very much installed right now so doesn't show very much but you can you know select an individual item and see more details about that for addin cards or nvme that you may have installed or USB peripherals or whatever is installed on the back panel it's really handy UEFI tech service lets you file an incident with ASRock technical support directly from the UEFI you can set your name and phone number and email and you know attach some information about your issue and it'll send your ufi configuration which greatly expedites the troubleshooting process the easy rate installer and E easy driver installer will help you configure a USB stick that contains like the Windows operating system with drivers necessary for Intel rst and that sort of thing and then of course you've got insta flash internet Flash and secure backup for the UEFI you can copy the UEFI from one chip to another chip because there's a backup chip on the motherboard and then you can go into your uh internet configuration and set it up for something other than DHCP if your network doesn't have a DHCP server or you just want to manually configure it you can also configure the uh ufi download server for the global region that you're in under the hardware monitor you can see all the hardware parameters you can also go into fantastic tuning I love that name and set the profiles that you want for your fans and and how they respond it's kind of nice that it's in the UEFI you don't have to rely on operating system support for that you can set the CPU opt header to behave as a CPU optional header fan or water pump control water pump control is just you know full on or full off chassis 3 Fan can also be a water pump if you would like for it to be you can set the mode here to be water pump mode and then you'll have the same sorts of controls as you do from the CPU optional header there's also over temperature protection here which is a sensor based on the motherboard uh for control of over temperature versus CPU thermal throttling so it's a little little different thing but this will shut down the system when the temperature is uh detected as overheated you got your standard Fair Security Options and including the secure Boot and Intel uh platform trust options if you're going to use secure boot go ahead and enable it before you install Windows or Linux as the case may be and then you got your standard issue boot options where you can configure you know the operating system that you want to boot from your boot manager that sort of thing that's been a quick tour of the ASRock fatality gaming k6 z270 based motherboard hopefully this uh tour of the ufi was insightful and you found everything you were looking for now in testing with this motherboard um you know I've only got the one I5 CPU to test this with so I have not had a chance to really put it through its Paces really see what it's got in terms of overclockability in terms of power delivery in terms of heat dissipation but for the modest overclocking that I did getting the I5 to about 4.5 GHz it did really well the vrm really didn't get very hot at all kbl Lake in general had like all the power management stuff and like all the efficiency of Skylake really pretty much gone the the the gains the performance gains with KB Lake really not that much most of the games with K Lake are around the peripheral IO so you can run more PCI Express Lanes for your peripherals things like more m.2 or more Thunderbolt that sort of thing the processor itself is really not not anything dramatic in terms of an upgrade over Skylake uh it actually uses a lot more power and generates a lot more heat than Skylake but for that extra power and heat you get a tiny tiny little bit more performance and maybe a little bit more overclockability all of the jury is still out on that but overall I did not have any problems with this board it does have a numeric diagnostic readout so you can look in the manual if something's not booting or can't find anything which will help you pin down you know if your computer won't post or you've got problems maybe you got Miss seated Ram or something like that you'll get a numeric code on the readout that'll help you troubleshoot overall it's a pretty competent board for z270 uh it's a little different it's a little different color scheme I think the board is maybe aimed at Gamers or aimed at people that want a red and black color scheme for their motherboard but overall I found it to be a pretty competent motherboard there were some subtle differences in the UEFI but if there's you know a huge swath of features or a huge you know set of tweaks that I missed let us know in the comments and I'll add it to the description now I didn't have a chance to try this motherboard with Linux but the extreme 4 z270 also from ASRock worked perfectly with Linux out of the box uh sound the whole nine yards so I would expect this one to work perfectly out of the box as well given that the hardware is so similar but if that's not the case or you know if somebody runs into problems let us know in the comments and I'll be glad to do some additional testing maybe once all the KB like hoopla is out of the way I can Circle back to this motherboard and we can try some PCI pass through something like that all depends on you guys whatever you want I don't know and whatever we got time for so overall it's pretty good if you picked up one of these let us know what your experiences are in the comments at level one text and wle I'm signing out and I'll see you there\n"